harsh steadiness and cruel sanity of the cosmos. In the
excellent tale of 'The Dragon's Grandmother,' in all the other tales of
Grimm, it is assumed that the young man setting out on his travels
will have all substantial truths in him; that he will be brave, full
of faith, reasonable, that he will respect his parents, keep his word,
rescue one kind of people, defy another kind, 'parcere subjectis et
debellare,' etc. Then, having assumed this centre of sanity, the writer
entertains himself by fancying what would happen if the whole world went
mad all round it, if the sun turned green and the moon blue, if horses
had six legs and giants had two heads. But your modern literature
takes insanity as its centre. Therefore, it loses the interest even of
insanity. A lunatic is not startling to himself, because he is quite
serious; that is what makes him a lunatic. A man who thinks he is a
piece of glass is to himself as dull as a piece of glass. A man who
thinks he is a chicken is to himself as common as a chicken. It is only
sanity that can see even a wild poetry in insanity. Therefore, these
wise old tales made the hero ordinary and the tale extraordinary.
But you have made the hero extraordinary and the tale ordinary--so
ordinary--oh, so very ordinary."

I saw him still gazing at me fixedly. Some nerve snapped in me under the
hypnotic stare. I leapt to my feet and cried, "In the name of God
and Democracy and the Dragon's grandmother--in the name of all good
things--I charge you to avaunt and haunt this house no more." Whether
or no it was the result of the exorcism, there is no doubt that he
definitely went away.

XVII. The Red Angel

I find that there really are human beings who think fairy tales bad
for children. I do not speak of the man in the green tie, for him I can
never count truly human. But a lady has written me an earnest letter
saying that fairy tales ought not to be taught to children even if
they are true. She says that it is cruel to tell children fairy tales,
because it frightens them. You might just as well say that it is cruel
to give girls sentimental novels because it makes them cry. All this
kind of talk is based on that complete forgetting of what a child is
like which has been the firm foundation of so many educational schemes.
If you keep bogies and goblins away from children they would make them
up for themselves. One small child in the dark can invent more hells
than Swedenborg. One small ch